


Under The Cape

by Kendrene



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Dom!Lena, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Headspace, Praise Kink, Smut, Soft D/s Dynamics, Vaginal Fingering, sub!Kara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-28 00:28:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12593980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kendrene/pseuds/Kendrene
Summary: The bearing of a well-known name is costly.The thought crosses Lena’s mind as she waits, one eye on the muted flat-screen above the fireplace, an ear to the door.People often regard the fact that she’s a Luthor with an envy they conceal behind open hostility. Little do they know about the price one pays for opulence and power - especially when one is born into it without having asked for all the things that it entails.Particularly when it comes to expectations.ORWhenever her duties as Supergirl become too much to bear, Kara turns to Lena for comfort. There is freedom in submission.





	Under The Cape

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first venture into the Supergirl universe, and my first Supercorp fic. Any feedback would be appreciated. 
> 
> Happy reading.
> 
> \- Dren

The bearing of a well-known name is costly.

The thought crosses Lena’s mind as she waits, one eye on the muted flat-screen above the fireplace, an ear to the door. 

People often regard the fact that she’s a Luthor with an envy they conceal behind open hostility. Little do they know about the price one pays for opulence and power - especially when one is born into it without having _asked_ for all the things that it entails.

Particularly when it comes to _expectations_.  

That is what she and Kara have in common - the reflection flitters across her mind as her eyes catch another glimpse of tragedy - that’s what drew them close in a way that nobody but they can understand.

Much like her, Kara carries the weight of a name - her legacy that of a savior, whereas Lena’s may as well be that of the Devil itself. 

And that’s why she knows her wife will come back to her through the door tonight. Because where everyone else wants the exceptional, Lena embraces Kara’s taste for mundanity.

She _understands_ it, for she craves it too.

Lena folds her hands into her lap, attention only half-focused on the tv screen. It’s nothing she hasn’t seen before, except this time the small letters scrolling at the bottom of the broadcast tell a tale of failure. 

A catastrophe that Kara has been bred to consider unacceptable. 

When the same images replay in some sort of a macabre loop, she reaches for the tv’s remote and switches the screen off, but the details resurface like photographs burned into film whenever she closes her eyes. 

Lena turns her gaze to the window that spans one entire wall of the living room, eyes wandering over the miracle of glass and steel that is the city around her. Yet she can’t help to think that National City has a penchant for disaster, or that maybe it’s been built in the wrong spot considering all that happens in its streets. 

Or perhaps it is the presence of her wife that draws trouble like a magnet, just like it happens to her cousin, as where great good resides, great evil also gathers in an attempt to snuff the good out.

If asked, Lena could not tell how she knows her wife has stepped into the building - through one of the many backways built specifically for this purpose - but she does. 

Sometimes Lena thinks it’s a change in the air - a muted vibration so to speak - that alerts her to her wife’s presence. And it isn’t something that comes only with her Supergirl persona, it’s an electric charge that has the fine hair at the nape of Lena’s neck stand on edge whenever her wife is close.

Which doesn’t happen as often as she’d like. 

They don’t live together - in fact nobody save Alex and Maggie know they are married - all at Kara’s insistence. Lena would shout her love from the roof of the city’s highest skyscraper, but her wife is all too conscious of how it’d draw Supergirl’s enemies like flies. Lena understands, although she thinks that with her resources she can protect herself quite easily, but Kara’s peace of mind is far more important to her than anything else.

Her wife’s burden is heavy enough.

When Kara’s presence becomes so strong the air around her almost shimmers with it, Lena knows her love is at the door. She doesn’t rise from her seat, nor does she uncross her legs. The only things she does, just as the door opens with the softest _click,_ is toss one of smoke-grey pillows strewn along the cream-colored couch onto the floor at her feet.

The gesture is almost surgically precise, but then again Lena Luthor is all clear cut edges and sharp angles. She wears a pencil skirt tonight, of a grey even smokier than that of the pillows, and stiletto heels, even though someone may find that little touch ridiculous inside her own house. By contrast, her blouse is of a searing white, sleeves rolled up to her elbows and her hair are pulled back in a severe high bun. She knows how her face looks, a smidge of perfectly applied makeup to highlight her cheekbones, grey eyeshadow and a lipstick of a red deeper than what she normally wears. 

The same rich burgundy she associates with sin, or a fine glass of chianti wine. 

The overall effect is the same she uses to cow the old men in suits that populate her meetings, but tonight she chose it - unconsciously, as if sensing it would be needed - to inspire obeisance rather than fear.

Supergirl storms inside the apartment like a natural disaster, slamming the door hard enough to make it rattle in its frame, if not break it. She is struggling to hold her powers in check, Lena sees it as soon as she comes into view, and she will lose control but not like that. 

The closer she gets to her couch, the more similar Kara becomes to smouldering ruins. The heroine’s facade is the first thing to go. Cracks spread like spiderwebs across the mask of stoicism Supergirl always wears, pain and grief trickling through, first in rivulets and then in a flood as the girl of steel turns as fragile as a glasshouse. 

Her clothes tell Lena a story she already knows by heart and almost cannot bear to hear repeated. Kara’s red cape hangs limps from her shoulders, in tatters like her spirit is. It’s torn in places, charred in others and the usual bright red is a duller shade, layered by particles of smoke. 

The blue suit fares no better, a big slash bisecting the S on its front to expose the pale skin underneath. There’s blood too, dark splotches that have dried on the fabric turning it black in certain spots, but it’s not Kara’s. 

It never is, and sometimes Lena thinks her wife would find relief if she could bleed a little. 

And when Lena’s eyes come to rest on her love’s face, she finds herself a breath away from abandoning the role they both have picked for her under these circumstances. 

Instead she steels herself and says.

“Disrobe.” 

Kara sheds her ripped clothes at almost superhuman speed and the pale flesh beneath is no less of a battlefield. 

What’s startling about it, is how unblemished it is, the only signs of Kara’s ordeal the streaks of soot blackening her skin like bruises. The usual golden hue of her hair is muted, buried under a powdering of ashes that turns the rich blonde to bone white. 

Naked her wife looks smaller, an apparition haunting the living room rather than a breathing, living being.

“Kneel.”

Lena lifts a hand, pointing at the pillow.

Kara stumbles to it gratefully, the last vestige of what she means for National City, forgotten on the floor with her sut. Lena watches her drop to her knees with a faint thud, and then without speaking further, she draws Kara’s head onto her lap, fingers carding through her wife’s hair. 

For a while Kara doesn’t utter a sound, simply pressing more firmly against Lena’s leg. Her body shakes like an autumn leaf about to fall, and when Lean looks down she can see that Kara’s hands are clenched into fists on her lap. She can perceive her wife’s immeasurable strength each time Kara draws a shaky breath, her energy like that of a spring so tightly wound it may snap under the pressure. 

Lena’s hand keeps moving, nails lightly scraping Kara’s scalp, and she doesn’t care that ash smears across her skin or whitens her skirt. All her attention is focused on her wife, the pillow at her feet the one place where Kara doesn’t need to remember she is Supergirl. She doesn’t even need to be Kara Danvers really, just a girl relinquishing control into trusted hands that will lift her burden for a time so that she doesn’t have to carry it.

Finally harsh, broken sobs emerge from Kara’s chest, merging with a series of jumbled _I couldn’t_ and _I didn’t._ Tears dampen Lena’s skirt, and her hand shifts to the nape of Kara’s neck, squeezing firmly.

“You don’t have to be nothing you don’t want to, right now girl.” Lena reminds her gently as the sobs taper off. And those simple words are enough to free her wife of the weight of expectation. 

Kara lifts her head and Lena’s hand shifts again, tilting her chin up so that they stare into each other’s eyes. As always Lena feels like she’s staring right into the heart of a galaxy at war, all the things that make her wife who she is coming to a head within the blue depths of her eyes. 

“What if there is something I’d like to be?” Kara’s voice is hoarse from all the crying, and occasional shudders still make her back clench and quake. She nuzzles into Lena’s hand and waits for an answer.

“Tell me.” It’s an order, Lena’s voice lilted in command, but an underlying warmth lingers in her tone. 

“I…” Kara swallows. “Your good girl.” Her wife’s eyes fill with surrender, “may I be your good girl, Miss? _Please_?”

Lena remembers the first time Kara asked her this. The situation had been entirely different, the two of them taking advantage of a night in which crime was laying surprisingly low to share Kara’s favorite food and a bottle of good wine. Evenings like that were rare, and both of them treasured them dearly. 

They’d been sitting on this same couch, plates precariously balanced on their laps and glasses on the floor, when Kara had started to tell her nervously about something that had been on her mind for a while. 

Some people would call it a fantasy, and as she listened Lena had thought of it as such, but as Kara went on her words had echoed with so much _need_ that she’d reconsidered. And now, after both of them had learned - a few mishaps later if Lena recalled correctly - she finds there is something of the sacred in the way Kara willingly kneels to her. 

Her wife is a creature of raw power as much as beauty, someone that - hypothetically speaking - could throw Lena through the window and off the building at a whim. Someone that could make the city crumble if she decided to, and it humbles Lena that one as goddess-like as Kara is, would choose to hand herself over so completely.

But despite all of her power there are nights such as this in which all her wife wants is to feel human.

“Come sit on my lap.” Lena’s words are an acceptance of Kara’s request, and as always when her wife rises without hesitation, a dual emotion splits her as neatly as a sword’s strike. 

One one hand Lena cannot help but admire the way Kara’s body seldomly tires, how - despite having knelt long enough to numb her legs - her wife rises effortlessly, almost springing to her feet.

On the other, this is a harsh and permanent reminder of the fact that her wife ages at a pace far removed from Lena’s own - and while she’s young, her mortality is never really out of mind. Kara will outlive her long enough to see her bones turn into dust, and those of her sister and friends as well.

“Lena?” Kara’s fingers hesitantly trace her jaw, and Lena realizes that the mask she wears during their sessions has slipped, revealing the rawness beneath.

“It’s nothing.” She reassures, hand lifting to cover Kara’s. Their fingers interlace and she tugs her wife forward gently, stilling both her face and the turmoil within her chest in the same breath.

Kara complies, but her eyes flash with an inquisitive light before thawing back to meekness. She will dig later, and Lena - who can deny her nothing - will end up confessing to the fear that sometimes rims her heart with ice. 

Lena uncrosses her legs so that Kara can straddle her lap and face her. She wraps her arms around Kara’s waist, but her wife’s hands remain folded in front of her, her expression sufficiently demure. 

Lena smiles approvingly.

Her wife has slipped back inside her headspace and remembers what happens when she touches her Miss without permission.

“Hands behind your back, girl.” Lena’s tone is just hard enough to make Kara shiver, and she obeys with an eagerness Lena decides to overlook.

She lets her eyes roam her wife’s body, heart clenching again at the signs Kara still bears from her last ordeal, aware that the woman currently taking up her lap watches every second of her perusal with bated breath. 

When Lena’s hands move, as they always unerringly do, Kara shudders, but manages to keep still.

“Good girl.” The words are now a caress that follows the path her fingers are lazily tracing along Kara’s shoulders and collarbone. 

Lena takes her time, fingers feathering light touches over Kara’s breasts, but never really straying close to where her love wants her the most, It’s a slow dance, the steps of which are known only to her, a stately pavane Lena maps out across Kara’s ribs and then down the taut planes of her stomach. 

She draws out the teasing as long as she is able, praise pouring from her lips whenever she feels that Kara is about to start squirming.

“You are such a good girl.” Lena says the words over and over, her hands growing more insistent, steering Kara towards her breaking point, “holding still for such a long time.”

Balance shifts the moment her fingers close around Kara’s stiffened nipples, tugging and teasing relentlessly.

“Please!” The word explodes from Kara’s chest and she arches, grinding herself into Lena’s lap. 

She smirks and looks down, admiring the wet streaks her wife’s dripping sex is leaving on her skirt.

“What do you want girl?” Lena knows, but she intends for Kara to say it.

“Inside me…” Kara slumps forward for a moment, eyes glazed and mouth sucking breath after ragged breath. “Inside me, please.”

“Please _what_?” Lena growls the question, leaning in and kissing Kara roughly before she has time to answer. Their tongues tangle for a moment but, just as a moan rattles her wife’s chest, Lena pulls back, eliciting a whimpered protest.

“Mistress!” Kara cries out, quivering so hard that if not for Lena’s arms sliding around her waist, she’d find herself on the floor. 

Lena crushes their mouths together, swallowing Kara’s plea, her hand finally dropping down between them to cup her lover’s sex. 

She knows that Kara needs release, feels it with every twitch of her wife’s powerful back against her arm. Her lover’s self-restraint is admirable, the control she has on her inhuman strength commendable even in this situation, but nervous energy is building inside her. 

Kara burns incandescent, like a supernova nearing its end. 

Lena doesn’t pace herself now, but takes her wife’s ultimate capitulation almost roughly, barely sparing the time to slicken her fingers before she’s plunging inside Kara’s wet heat to the hilt. 

Kara is tight, and yet so open, her walls drawing Lena’s fingers as deep as they will go. Her muscles clench around Lena even before she presses her thumb to Kara’s clitoris, the circles she draws around the swollen tip relentless. 

Lena’s other hand moves up Kara’s spine, fingers seizing her wife by the scruff of her neck to hold her in place as she plunders her. They kiss throughout, mouths breaking away only to resume even more ravenous. As she nears her climax, Kara goes rigid, her eyes locking with Lena’s in mute request. 

She is frayed beyond the ability to talk, and now that she’s just a naked girl on her Mistress’ lap, she is the one crumbling, and not the world around her. 

“Let go.” Lena’s pretence drips away, the cold facade fading like snow under unexpected sunlight. “I’ve got you. Let go for me Kara.” 

Her wife’s undoing is beautiful to see - required like a storm after a period without rain, and equally devastating. 

Kara’s release _floods_ the palm of Lena’s hand, stains her wrists, and she shift slightly so that the heel of her hand allows her wife to slowly grind into her as she rides her pleasure out. Kara thrashes for a time, a wild thing refusing to be tamed then, when lassitude begins to pervade her, her body stills. 

Quiet descends again, and Kara leans forward to rest her head on Lena’s shoulder, arms going around her neck. 

The living room gradually starts to darken around them, sun plummeting towards dusk. Neither of them acknowledge the lengthening shadows, as they choose to linger in each other’s space instead, and let the world pass them by at least for a while.

It’s more of a truce than actual peace, but for now it is enough of a reprieve.

************************

“Lena?” 

Kara’s voice is barely above a whisper, but Lena jolts awake and upright with a gasp, so fast she almost falls off the couch, her wife’s gentle hands the only thing preventing the tumble.

Her cheeks heat up when she realizes she must have fallen asleep, and she opens her mouth to apologize. This never happened before - usually after their scene is over she leads Kara to the bathroom and they shower together, sharing one of those quiet moments they value so much. 

But a day of meetings must have drained her - it’s the only explanation Lena can find. 

“Easy.” Kara hushes her, fingertips pressed to her lips, “it’s ok to be tired.” She sits down on the couch and pulls Lena close, so that her head is resting in her lap. Kara smells of chamomile and not smoke now, her skin clean and an oversized D.E.O. t-shirt they take turns wearing covering her nudity. 

They smile at each other lovingly, and Lena thinks with a hint of amusement that their roles are now reversed.

“What troubled you before?” Kara asks, just as she expected. She bends down and dusts soft kisses along Lena’s jaw, before pulling back to stare down at her with serious eyes. 

“Just…” It’s hard to voice the words, painful, but Lena does, drowning in blue eyes that have become her safest haven. 

“I was thinking about the day I won’t be here anymore.” It’s apparent that Kara understands she doesn’t mean abandonment, but something as _other_ and unavoidable as death has the tendency to be.

“ _Lena_ …”

Kara cradles her close, and Lena presses her ear to her wife’s chest, listening for the strong beating of her heart. 

A heart that no human-forged weapon can touch, but which has endured enough loss to last a hundred lifetimes.

“I love you Lena Luthor.” Kara murmurs, lips grazing her own, “I love you now and I will love you old and grey.” A touch of sadness dims the light within her eyes, but then Kara’s lips meet her own more firmly, and Lena melts into the kiss. 

“How do you know?” She whispers when they pull apart for air, “how can you be sure?” 

“Because you are my person.” Kara says it simply, as if stating the sky is blue and water wet. And, upon hearing the inherent acceptance of her words, Lena starts to cry. 

It’s a soft and quiet sort of liberation that spills out from her eyes and drenches her cheeks. Because never in her life has someone not demanded she be the woman she is not, which is to say a Luthor first and Lena second. But Kara easily dismantles all the established patterns of behaviour - as she usually does - and a part of Lena that has been broken since her birth, is finally fixed.

Kara says nothing, shifting them around until they are both laying on the couch, legs entwined and arms around the other. Then her wife pulls something over them - not a blanket, Lena realizes - but an unsullied cape, red as the sun finally setting outside. 

She feels warm, _loved_ and, as the two of them drift off to sleep, Lena knows that, as long as Kara is near, she is as safe as the city going quiet around them.

**Author's Note:**

> [follow me on TUMBLR for more stories and exclusive content](https://kendrene.tumblr.com/)


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